Wednesday, 4 February 2015

Save The Groom

Many of us in the UK like a pint (let’s be honest, we like
more than a pint, we like several pints) and the origins of this
go back to the middles ages, when every man woman and child in the country
drank up to eight pints of small beer
a day. Small beer wasn’t very strong, in terms of alcohol content, but it was
safer to drink than the water and so our obsession began.

There’s something we like more than a pint though, and that’s
a good pub in which to drink it. Pubs are a long established and deeply
ingrained part of the social fabric and landscape of the nation. They’re not
just places for drinking, of course; they are places to socialise, to make new
acquaintances, to flirt, to fall in love, to argue and to fall out of love. They
are places to eat, to listen to and watch live music, to watch the football and
to act embarrassingly. And many of our pubs are closing.

Now, while I may have a romantic attachment to pubs, I’m not
an idiot; I know that the economic climate has been difficult, that the ban on
smoking has hit trade, that only so many premises can remain financially viable,
that many have closed and that many more will do so. But when it’s my pub (or
to be more accurate, one of my pubs; I drink in several), it hurts and I can’t
just sit back and let it happen. I have to… to what? I have to at the very
least say something.

The area of Brighton where I live, Hanover, once had so many
pubs that it was known as Hangover (a much better name than Muesli Mountain,
which we are led to believe by media types is its name these days, despite the
fact that I have never heard a single resident of the place use that idiot
term). I have been told that every one of the densely packed streets had, at
one time, a pub at either end and that some even had a third half way along.
Only one Hanover street now has a pub at either end, but fortunately I live on
that street and both are excellent establishments.

A little down the hill from this blessed streets one can
find The Horse and Groom. When I first moved to Hanover, we went there to watch
televised football matches, but little else. It had its ups and downs, but it
also had a great back story. Legend (and, sadly, I gather it is only legend) has it that a severed
head in a bag was once deposited on the bar of the pub as part of some
underworld feud and some people still refer to The Horse and Groom as The Severed Head. Some also refer to it
as The Doom and Gloom, but that’s somewhat
harsh, although the leaded stained glass windows do let in very little light,
while the distinctive and rather splendid green tiling on the exterior add
somewhat to the sense of darkness.

Occasionally there would be live music
in The Horse and Groom and it had for many years in the past been a regular venue, something which was restored when Pat, the current landlord, arrived bringing
with him Friday and Saturday night live music and attracting a group of
punters who tended to appreciate that music, whatever it was, even if it was instrumental
surf music. This made The Doom a
great place to visit on those evenings and it made it an even better place to play
for us local musicians thrilled to find an audience open to our music. Better
still, you got paid, and the more the audience liked you, the more you got paid,
since a good portion of the fee came from whatever they were prepared to put in
the hat as it was passed around.

But here’s the thing. Many of our pubs are owned by large corporations:
breweries and the so-called pubcos. To be honest, they often don’t much care
about what goes on in a back-street boozer in Brighton on a Friday night. They’re
not interested that a surf band from Belgium (Los Venturas, Pirato Ketchup), or
Germany (The West Samoa Surfer League), or Brighton (The Squadron Leaders, Los
Fantasticos, The Space Agency) or, ahem, Surf City UK (Surfin’ Lungs) is
playing in The Horse and Groom (and all of those bands have), or what a magical
night it was last Christmas Eve when Link Grey and the Dark Country played with
Thee Sherbert Peardrop Explosion. They care about one thing only; the bottom
line. And the bottom line is this: it’s really difficult for a back-street
boozer in Brighton, especially one without a kitchen, to make a lot of money. Especially
when it is a tied house and has to purchase the majority of its drink direct
from the pubco that owns it, at a vastly inflated price. Especially when the
owners decide to massively increase the rent, to the level where it makes no
sense for the landlord to extend the lease. Especially when the owners know
that the tied house system is going to end soon and they think they would be
better off selling the building for development (as they have recently done
with three other pubs in the locality, which have been or will shortly be
turned into houses or flats).

So that’s it. The Horse and Groom is probably going to
close. It is probably going to be turned into housing.A little bit of me will close with it. A
little bit of our social history will be lost. A little bit of our community
spirit will go too.

But it could be different. OK, so the pubco would rather sell the
premises than try and run the pub. So sell the premises, but sell them (or at
least try to sell them) to someone who thinks they can make the pub work. They
won’t do this of course; the favoured tactic seems to be to sell the property
with a clause attached meaning that it cannot be re-opened as a pub. Why would
the pubco do that? Because they own other pubs in the vicinity (yes, in
addition to The Horse and Groom and the
other three pubs which they have sold for development recently) and they don’t
want the competition. Now, I thought that we had lived for over thirty years
under successive governments who told us that competition was good (in fact that
competition was pretty much the only good), that it guaranteed choice, that it made our lives better.
So why is one company able to hoover up so many pubs in one small area of this
city and then to sell on the premises in such a way that competition is restricted;
that choice is restricted? Honestly,
you couldn’t make this stuff up.

Now maybe the market is just too saturated; maybe there
really is no place for The Horse and Groom and the only thing is for it to join
the growing list of lost pubs in this country, to become just another bit of
the fabric of our society that gets rubbed out. As I said, I’m not an idiot; if
that’s how it is, that’s how it is, however sad it makes me. But we don’t know
that that’s how it is, because no one else is going to get the opportunity to
see if they can carve out a niche for The Horse and Groom, free from the
restrictive practice of the tied house system, and what we will get is more
bloody flats, because the current owners will see to it that that’s what
happens.

There’ I’ve done… no, I haven’t done anything… but at least I’ve said something. And what I say is this: “Save The Doom and Gloom.
Save The Severed Head. Save The Horse and Groom.” And maybe, just maybe, I’ll
get the Bambi Molesters to play there some day!